Saturday, January 08, 2005

Rainy weather introspection ...

This is a day for cleaning and tossing -- and rediscovering words written at another time to one no longer living.

From Walden Yale: "...It tells me that you do not yield to substituting the ease and acceptance of the human gift or pitfall of imagination, and choose the more difficult path of continuing to quietly ponder, wonder, study, experience while living a life worth living to its end..."

Walden: along with Laura's lovely post on The Emperor and her new thoughts on The Color Purple," the words above bring to mind that one of the signs of maturity may well be an increasing comfort with uncertainty. Maybe -- as we age -- we develop more respect for how much there is to be known, and of how wanting we humans are to encompass it all in but one lifetime.

Remember hearing recently on NPR a scientist describing the great migrations of the monarchs from the east coast of the USA to the welcoming trees of Argentina. Because of the distance and their fragility as a species, that trip to and from over those countless miles over a lengthy period of a year (as I recall), requires four or five generations between departure and return. Remarkable, isn't it? This extraordinary example of an astounding application of natural law is mind-boggling, indeed.

That provided a new pathway of thought for me when I started to muse on the possibility that I am (we are) on a grand migration through life that is dependent upon my ability to lean on and learn from all those with I come into contact, and that it is essential to all of existence that my role be well played and my contribution be beyond my own needs. Interesting thought, isn't it? Perhaps takes us all to know and with few exceptions, not many of us hold within ourselves the power to go it alone.

As with those monarchs, none among us knows from whence we've come, or where we will finally light, but they go on soaring through the universe with neither compass nor bible, bearing their progeny and wending their way into the future -- guided by some unrevealed universal plan that surely will bring them "home."

Natural science has documented the fact of their flight, but the magical "flight plan" is beyond human comprehension.

A part of me is intrigued by the thought of being a "monarch" who will defy known reality by thrusting myself into the unknown in order to participate in whatever comes next. My strong belief is that next is merely non-existence and a return to the matter from which I've come. That I need all of you to complete the journey is about all I'm really certain of, and that there is but one life -- and that we're all living it.